Caroline the Vampire Slayer
by Wilhelmina Silver
Summary: After the Miss Mystic Falls pageant, Caroline is activated as a Slayer. Betrayed by the people she calls family and friends, she runs away to learn more about her destiny. She gets more than what she bargained for when she meets Dawn and Xander, members of the International Watchers Council, Version 2.0.
1. Chosen

**Author's Notes** : So this has been sitting in my brain for the last year. After multiple conversations with lynyrdwrites (aka Lynyrd Lionheart) on tumblr, I've decided to post this baby up while I'm attempting to write a follow up. Anyway, this is a series of drabbles where Caroline is a Slayer. Hopefully, there'll be more. But, in the meantime, please enjoy what I have so far and review. Thanks!

 **Other Notes** : This story takes place where parts of season 3-5 of _Angel_ does not exist. Cordelia doesn't ascend and get body-jacked by a higher power and the Angel Investigations team does not run Wolfram and Hart.

 **Disclaimer** : I don't own _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ and _The Vampire Diaries_.

* * *

Chosen

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"So, here's the part where you make a choice."

The unfamiliar words poured out of Caroline's mouth in a voice that wasn't her own. Light filtered through the sheer white curtains as she stood in an unfamiliar living room, facing a sea of faces that belonged to several girls and five men. They stared at her, looking to her for guidance as though she was the general of an army, leading them into battle.

Warmth filled her and her voice became muted but her mouth kept moving. Something rang in her ears that increasingly got louder. Just as quickly, she heard herself talk.

 _I'm dreaming_ , the seventeen-year-old realized.

"Every girl who could have the power, will have the power. Can stand up, will stand up. Slayers. Every one of us. Make your choice. Are you ready to be strong?"

The warm feeling intensified until it became searing hot and engulfed her entire being. She gasped as her eyes opened. The teenager rubbed her eyes as the smell of disinfectant filled her nose.

 _Oh, god_ , she thought panicking. _I'm in the hospital._

She turned in her hospital bed. She stopped when she saw a familiar brunette girl standing a few feet away from her bed.

"Elena?" Caroline asked.

"Hey, Caroline," the brunette girl said.

Caroline laid back against the pillows. She brought her hands to her face and groaned. Her senses screamed. Something prickled at the base of her neck and traveled down her spine.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, groggy. Strength returned to her limbs, her body healing. Her internal alarms kept ringing.

 _That's not Elena_ , her instincts screamed.

The other girl approached Caroline's bed. "My name is Katherine," the Elena imposter said, leaning over Caroline. "I was hoping you could give the Salvatore brothers a message for me."

Caroline fidgeted in the bed, bracing herself.

 _Let her think you're weak_ , her instincts instructed.

"What are you talking about?" the teenager demanded. "What message?"

"Game on." Katherine said.

Armed with a pillow, Katherine raised her arms. Before the brunette could suffocate her, Caroline grabbed the other girl's wrists and, with strength she didn't know she possessed, broke them, causing the brunette to scream. Without wasting her momentum, Caroline punched the other girl with a fierce right hook, flinging her against the opposite wall and knocking her out.

Ripping the IV attached to her arm, Caroline sprung out of bed and checked the other girl's pulse. There wasn't one.

"Oh, my god." Bile rose in Caroline's throat. "She's dead."

Grabbing her clothes and fleeing to the bathroom, she stood in front of the mirror, her hands braced against the sink. She stared at her reflection. A blonde teenager stared back at her, a panicked expression on her face.

"What the hell am I?" she asked her reflection. "I just killed someone!" She closed her eyes, her mind racing. She exhaled a breath to calm her mind.

"Now is not the time to be panicking," Caroline scolded herself. "We need to get the hell out of here before someone discovers the body."

Nodding at her reflection, she hurriedly dressed. Opening the door and ignoring the slumped form of her friend's doppelganger, Caroline fled the hospital.

* * *

2

Familiar blue eyes bled red as incisors became fangs and white, hot pain radiated from her neck. Caroline lurched out of bed, her chest heaving. "Oh, god," she moaned, rubbing her hands on her face as the terrible memory lingered.

It had been a week since the Miss Mystic Falls pageant. A week since the car accident. A week since the Elena-imposter, also known as Katherine, tried to kill Caroline. Since the attempted murder and Caroline's showdown with the imposter, Caroline's dreams became more vivid and intense.

And her memories started to return, filling in the gaps she'd been having since meeting Damon Salvatore.

Caroline stared at her full-length mirror. A vision of her in her underwear the morning after she had sex with the tall, dark, and arrogant monster rose in her mind. Unconsciously, she lifted a hand to her neck.

It wasn't the first time Caroline dreamt something so realistic, so intense, that it felt like it was a vision. She was always someone else, a different girl from a different time, usually fighting monsters.

It started when she was fifteen going on sixteen. She was learning about China and the Boxer Rebellion in her AP European History class when she fell asleep studying for the test. She didn't remember much from the dream, only that she was in China, during the Boxer Rebellion, fighting a blond vampire. The details were a blur, the only thing that stood out was that the vampire had an English accent and said, "Sorry, love, I don't speak Chinese," before a sharp pain erupted from her neck and he killed her. She had started keeping a dream journal ever since.

"Damon's a vampire…and Stefan's one too," Caroline whispered, not for the first time. Her heart raced, itching to be pulled out. Raw energy coursed through her, craving some action.

Panic rose like a tidal wave. In the week since the accident, since she realized their supernatural status, everything about the Salvatore brothers made her instincts scream predator.

With her memories returning in the week since she left the hospital, Caroline saw all of her conversations with her friends through new eyes. It felt like waking from a sleeping curse. She wasn't sure what was worse—the fact that Damon was a vampire who repeatedly violated her or the fact that her friends knew about it but did nothing to stop him.

 _Elena was horrified when she saw the bite marks on my neck…but she didn't look surprised. She and Bonnie had secret conversations but would suddenly grow quiet whenever I was near them_ , the blonde recalled.

Heat flowed through her veins. Panic gave way to anger.

"Those bitches!"

 _They knew what was happening but they did nothing!_

Caroline jumped out of bed, getting her things together. Hauling her duffel bag and her luggage onto her bed, she dug through her closet. She needed a change of scenery. It was time to visit her dad.

Suddenly, the front door slammed. Heavy boots shuffled across the wooden floor.

"I just got home," her mother said. "Are you sure it's another vampire attack?"

Silence followed. Caroline paused in grabbing the clothes from her hangers. Her heart lurched.

 _Mom knew?_ Fire rose in her chest as her mind processed. _She knew and never told me?!_

"No, it's okay," her mother reassured. "Caroline should be asleep by now."

Shaking her head, Caroline gathered her clothes into her arms and marched out of the closet, slamming them next to her suitcases.

 _Mom knew about the monsters but never told me. Bonnie and Elena knew about the monsters and never told me. Did she tell them that vampires exist? Why wasn't I good enough to even know? What made Bonnie and Elena so special? WHY DIDN'T SHE TELL ME?!_

Something solid sank inside her. Caroline rummaged through her dresser, getting her toiletries.

"I can't stay here anymore," she whispered. "Damon has free access to this house. And if Damon could rape me of my memories, he could do the same thing to Mom. I'm not safe."

She continued to pack, ignoring the hurricane her room became.

 _I need something to buy me some time_ , Caroline thought. Panic, terror, and anger welled inside the blonde teenager, an unholy trinity driving her.

She went to her desk, disconnecting her laptop and packing it with her things. With a piece of paper, she penned a quick note to her mother, letting the older woman know that she was going to see her father. Satisfied, she placed it on her bed and grabbed her duffel bag and suitcase.

She stood in front of her bedroom window and quietly opened it. With one leg out the window, she paused and looked back at her room. Her eyes landed on the note.

 _Should I really do this?_ Caroline wondered. Doubt began to plague her.

 _They kept you in the dark_ , her mind whispered. _How can you trust that they would have your back if they never even told you about the wolves at the gate?_

She opened her eyes. Resolve settled over her, dampening the panic and the terror bubbling inside her. Before she could change her mind, she slipped out of the house.

Her phone was still charging on her desk.

* * *

3

Not for the first time, Caroline paced the main lobby of the Hyperion Hotel. She arrived in Los Angeles three months after she ran away. She had always wanted to go to LA—before the drama her life became, her goal was to go to UCLA. Now, she was there for another reason.

Cordelia Chase.

Ever since Caroline kept a dream journal to write all of her vision-dreams, she started a habit of pouring over all of her entries to look for clues about what she was becoming and what else was out there. She had to survive and, to do that, she needed to research. (She learned that the hard way when she fought a newborn vampire a week after she ran away; she barely survived that fight.) As she searched her journal entries, there was one word that kept popping up.

Sunnydale.

And Cordelia Chase was her only lead on Sunnydale.

Caroline paused in her pacing and stared at the ragtag group that made up Angel Investigations. Her senses told her there were two vampires, a demon, three humans, and two half-demons.

They stared at her in morbid fascination.

"So, let me get this straight," Caroline said, gesturing vaguely. "You guys are real. Like, Sunnydale was a real town before it got blown off the map. And Cordelia, Angel, Spike, and Wesley were there at one point in time. Everything was real?"

"That sounds about right," Cordelia said glibly.

Caroline nodded. "And you guys happened to show up while I was fighting a vampire nest that was feeding from the homeless because you had a vision of me," the blonde teenager told the older brunette woman.

"Yeah."

"You're a Seer." That brought Caroline up short. "Huh. I had you pegged for a half-demon."

The others in the room tensed.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Angel demanded.

"Nothing offensive," Caroline replied. "It's just that I can sense the supernatural people in this room. I don't think that applies to Seers. It would make sense for Seers to be half-demons and demons too, right? It's not just humans who have the market on that. I mean, Seer-dom is equal opportunity."

"Caroline," Angel interrupted the blonde's rambling, "how are you knowing this?"

"I don't know!" Caroline cried. "I kept having dreams of being another girl in another time but they felt very real. And then, three months ago, some girl who looked exactly like my best friend tried to kill me when I was in the hospital. And I threw her off of me like she was a pillow!"

"Did you just say, 'another girl in another time'?" the scruffy British guy, Wesley, asked.

Caroline nodded. "Yeah. What does that have to do with anything?"

Wesley stood up and walked over to the brunet vampire. "Angel," he said, "we need to talk."

* * *

4

"Are you sure she's in LA?" Dawn asked. The seventeen-year-old teenager glanced at Xander in confirmation. They were in a rental car, driving from Virginia to California on a cross-country road trip to look for an elusive Slayer.

Almost a year had passed since Buffy's battle with the First and Sunnydale becoming a sinkhole in the aftermath. In the aftermath, Dawn and the others relocated to England to start a new, revamped version of the Watchers Council.

"Yes, Dawnie, I'm sure," Xander said, his eye focused on the road. "The Devon Coven told us there's a Slayer in Los Angeles. And that phone call Buff got from Deadboy confirmed it."

Dawn groaned at her sister's best friend. "The Devon Coven also said that there was a Slayer activated in Mystic Falls. Look where that got us."

When they arrived in Mystic Falls to find the Slayer, one Caroline Forbes, it was too late. According to Liz Forbes, town sheriff and Caroline's mother, she was dead.

That was three months ago.

Xander sighed. "I know, Dawn. But I have a good feeling about this. We'll find her. Hopefully before some Big Bad comes after her."

Without another word, Xander pressed harder on the gas pedal. The two rode in silence, hoping they weren't on another goose chase.

* * *

5

Caroline sat in Angel's office. She stared, disbelieving, at Angel, who sat behind his desk, and Wesley, who stood next to the vampire. A week had passed since she first met the Angel Investigations team and she had been staying at the Hyperion Hotel with them.

"So, you're saying that I'm a Slayer," Caroline said, processing what the British man had told her that morning. "And, you were a Watcher in Sunnydale. But now you're not."

"Listen, Caroline, I know it's a lot to take in," Angel said, rushing to reassure her, "but I called some people who can help you learn more."

"Angel?" Cordelia barged into the office. "Xander and Dawn are here."

"We'll be out in a minute." Angel turned to the blonde teenager. "Do you want to meet them?"

Caroline nodded. Without another word the trio left the office and walked into the main lobby. Cordelia was chatting with a girl who looked about her age while Gunn was talking to a guy.

"There he is," Cordelia shouted. The girl and the man turned their attention to Caroline, Angel, and Wesley.

The girl was lean, willowy, with a fair complexion, green eyes and long legs. Her hair was long, straight, and dark brown. She looked as though she was Caroline's age. The guy standing next to the willowy girl was older, maybe in his twenties, with unruly dark hair and an eyepatch on his left eye.

Caroline didn't know their names but she recognized their faces. They were in her dreams.

"Xander," Angel greeted as the other guy.

"Deadboy," Xander replied.

"Hey, Dawn," Angel said to the brunette teenager.

"Angel," Dawn said. She fidgeted. "So, who's your friend?"

"I'm Caroline Forbes." She gave her best Miss Mystic smile and waved. The others had left to give the trio their privacy.

"Wait, what?" Xander asked. "You're supposed to be dead."

"What are you talking about?" Caroline asked. "Who told you?"

"Okay, let's back up. I'm Dawn Summers." Dawn interrupted. She pointed to Xander. "And this is Xander Harris. We're from the International Watchers Council, Version 2.0. We were looking for you three months ago but your mother told us you were dead."

"Why would my mother think I'm dead?" Caroline asked, puzzled. "At the very least, she would think that I ran away."

"Maybe it had to do with your friends thinking you're a vampire," Xander explained.

Caroline made a face. "How did that happen?"

"The CliffsNotes version: Katherine tried to kill you but you managed to stop her," Dawn said. Before Caroline could ask, Dawn shrugged. "I was chatting up your friends, Bonnie and Elena, when Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum appeared. I think they're called the Salvatore brothers, right? Well, anyway, there was a whispered conversation, that I may have eavesdropped, where they think you're a vampire since you supposedly died with Damon's blood in your system."

"You've met them?" Caroline enquired.

Dawn shuddered. "I don't want to think about it."

"Anyway," Xander said, "they figured you were a vampire since you managed to knock out a 500-year-old vampire."

Caroline closed her eyes, bringing a hand to the bridge of her nose. "Okay, one thing at a time." She opened her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. "You know what I am. What's a Slayer?"

"In every generation, there is a Chosen One," Dawn explained. "She alone wields the strength and skill to stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer."

"At least, that was how the prophecy was until a couple of months ago when Buffy changed the rules and made all the Potential Slayers become Slayers," Xander said.

"What do you mean?" Caroline asked.

"Buffy's my sister," Dawn began. "She was the Slayer. Back then, for another Slayer to be called, the current one has to die. Buffy kind of threw off the balance when she died the first time at the Master's hands. She was dead for five minutes but that was enough time for another Slayer to be called; Kendra was her name. When Kendra died, another Slayer was called. Faith. So there were two Slayers."

"Recently, there was an attack on the Slayer line," Xander continued. "While only one Slayer could be called at a time, there are a lot of Potential Slayers—girls who could one day become the Slayer after the previous one had died. There was this Big Bad who started to kill Potential Slayers before he could kill Buffy. Anyway, there was this big epic battle where Buffy decided to break the rules and allow every girl who might be a Slayer to be a Slayer."

Everything fell into place. A flame flickered to life inside the blonde teenager. A look of determination flashed across her face.

"Tell me everything."


	2. A Nice Place to Visit Part I

**Author's Notes** : Sorry for the long wait. Writer's block is a complete bitch and I had more plot bunnies than I knew what to do with. Thank you for the reviews and the favorites. It definitely makes my day when I get an email saying that I got a new review or that someone followed and/or favorited my story.

Also, thank you, Uppity Bitch (also known as supremeuppityone) and Lynyrd Lionheart (aka lynyrdwrites) and lalainajanes, for listening to me and my rambling on tumblr.

 **willdawg992003 and Guest** : This story is mainly told from Caroline's point of view. So, whatever did happen with the Angel Investigations team and with Spike's soul and the amulet, Caroline doesn't really know and I'm pretty sure that, since she is a stranger who isn't going to stick around with them, they're not going to tell her their whole life story. As for the Spike's soul in the amulet, Wolfram & Hart could always mail the amulet back to Angel just to mess with him.

 **Standard disclaimers apply.** Happy reading!

* * *

A Nice Place to Visit

Part I

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The Vampire (I)

"Bonnie, I just got your message. What the hell's going on?" Caroline demanded as the blonde vampire stormed into the Salvatore boarding house. She stopped in her tracks when she spied her dark-haired friend hunched over a cauldron in the middle of the living room with a grimoire laying on a bookstand nearby.

"I found a spell that could help us get rid of the Originals," Bonnie answered as she looked up from the old tome. Her eyes sparkled in excitement.

Caroline's stomach clenched. A sense of foreboding hovered over her. _It couldn't be that easy_ , she thought. "Really?" she asked, trying to sound casual. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure," the witch admitted, "but it roughly translates into a summoning spell."

"Roughly?" Caroline parroted. Her voice rose higher in irritation. "You mean you're not sure? What the hell, Bonnie?!"

Bonnie turned to her. "Well excuse me but I was in a rush!" she said defensively. "Klaus wants to use Elena as a blood bag to make more hybrids and Damon and Stefan keep pressuring me to find a way to save Elena. Now are you going to help me or not?"

Caroline huffed. "What do you need me to do?" she asked, trying (and failing) to keep the disgruntlement out of her tone.

Bonnie handed Caroline a mortar and pestle. "Just crush the herbs and add it to the cauldron."

The vampire grabbed the mortar and pestle and started crushing the ingredients vigorously.

 _It's just typical that every supernatural crisis is always centered around little-miss-perfect-Elena. Why is everyone willing to fall on their swords for her?_ Caroline angrily thought. _Like, is it worth hundreds, thousands, of lives to die just for one girl?! Nobody even bothered to do everything they could to protect me from the damn Salvadouche! Nobody thought it would be a good idea to keep me in the loop and let me know about vampires! I was the last to know and I had to find out the hard way. I bet Bonnie already told Elena and the Salvatores about her plan to do this spell and didn't bother to tell me until she needed an extra set of hands._

As the vampire finished crushing the dried herbs, she scooped up the now powdered plants. _For once, I wish I had friends who actually values me and don't treat me as an afterthought_ , she thought as she dropped the last ingredient into the cauldron.

The cauldron exploded. Smoke poured out.

"What the hell, Caroline?" Bonnie turned her attention to the blonde vampire, coughing and frantically waving her hands to fan the smoke away.

The brunette stopped short. The living room was deserted.

"Caroline?" Bonnie asked into the empty living room. "Are you still here?"

Silence.

"Caroline?"

* * *

The Slayer (I)

There were a couple of things Caroline picked up since she was called as a Slayer. One, Dawn, for one reason or another, would always get kidnapped on a Tuesday. Two, Caroline was a magnet for morally ambiguous supernatural creatures who may or may not be evil. And three, never say the W-word.

It was the last bit that had the blonde Slayer standing in a room she hadn't occupied in over year. With the exception of a few photos that she knew she hadn't taken, her bedroom hadn't changed much since she was seventeen.

"What the hell?" Caroline growled. She automatically grabbed her phone from her jacket pocket and dialed Dawn's number.

"The number you have dialed is not in service," the automated voice said.

Caroline disconnected the call with a hard press of her thumb. "Great, just great," she muttered. She inwardly cursed as she remembered what brought her to the room she didn't think she would set foot in ever again, not since she discovered that her mother and her friends knew about vampires and never bothered to tell her.

…

"It's quiet out here," Caroline said as she and Dawn were patrolling the cemetery near Devon. Night had fallen on the English countryside and the duo were armed with flashlights, stakes, and a sword as they did their nightly sentry. She turned to her friend. "Where's Wes?"

"With Katherine and Enzo," Dawn answered. The brunette junior Watcher looked at her phone, checking the group text. "Enzo's complaining that there isn't any action. Katherine is whining about Wes lecturing them. And Wes is complaining that, for immortals who are centuries older than him, they're acting like a bunch of children."

"So, it's quiet," Caroline summarized.

"It's quiet," Dawn agreed.

If someone had told a seventeen-year-old Caroline that monsters existed and that she was destined to fight the forces of evil, she would've had that person checked into a mental hospital. But everything changed when she woke up in the hospital and found Katherine hovering over her hospital bed and trying to suffocate her with a pillow. Caroline's quick reflexes and superhuman strength kept the Petrova doppelganger from killing her.

After that incident, the curtains surrounding Caroline's life unraveled. Vampires were real and her so-called friends and her mother knew but never bothered to tell her. Angry, hurt, and betrayed, she left.

A year had passed since she ran away to Los Angeles and met Wesley and Dawn and Xander who told her that she was a Slayer, a year since she left her small town life to go with them to England to learn more about what being a Slayer meant. Since then, Wesley had become Caroline's Watcher, guiding her and ensuring that she survived the never-ending battle between good and evil. Since then, Caroline rescued and befriended a vampire man-child with an affinity for strong, warrior-women and a huge allergy to big boy underwear. And, for some odd reason, she was friends with her attempted murderer—it probably helped that Katherine was no longer a vampire, just an immortal _something_.

"So, what are your plans?" Dawn's voice interrupted the Slayer's thoughts.

"For what?" Caroline asked, puzzled.

"College? It's almost that time to start applying and you haven't even told me about which schools you were planning on applying. And I know you. You would've been preparing for this since we've set foot on English soil," Dawn explained.

The blonde shrugged. "I do have a list of schools made. My top choices are UCLA and Tulane."

Dawn frowned. "Why Tulane?"

"Giles mentioned there was a hellmouth there."

They stopped in front of a statue of an angel. "Okay, but where do _you_ want to go?" Dawn asked.

"I don't know," Caroline answered. She started pacing. "Like, before everything happened, I had all these plans. I wanted to get out of Mystic Falls, see the world, and maybe fall in love. I wanted to make a mark on the world! And then I got Called and I don't even know if I can do any of those things!"

Dawn smiled in sympathy. "Do you miss Mystic Falls?"

Caroline paused in her pacing. Did she? "Sometimes," she admitted, after a silence, "when I'm patrolling and I would think about my mom. If she could see me now, what would she think?"

"Are you considering applying to Whitmore College?" her friend asked. "It's close to Mystic Falls."

"Oh, god, no." Caroline made a face. "Even before I was Called, I didn't want to stay in Mystic Falls. I was an insecure, neurotic control freak and, no matter how hard I tried or how hard I worked, everyone always wanted Elena."

Dawn hummed in commiseration. "Yeah, I remember you telling me about her. I still don't get what makes her so special."

Caroline gestured. "I know, right?!" She continued to pace. Like, I'm still a neurotic control freak now. But I _can_ take care of myself. I don't need everyone falling all over themselves trying to save me! I'm not some damsel in distress and I just wish they could see that I'm not just some freaking _Barbie doll_ who's just a pretty face."

Before she realized it, her surroundings blurred. She vaguely heard Dawn's panicked cry. When her vision cleared, the eighteen-year-old Slayer found herself standing in the room she hadn't occupied in over a year.

"What the hell?"


End file.
